Variety’s youth issue praises Canadian stars

Alex Strachan, Postmedia News07.24.2013

Canadian actress Nina Dobrev — shown in a scene with Paul Wesley, left, and Ian Somerhalder in a scene from The Vampire Diaries — earned a Power of Youth Award for her efforts on behalf of Free the Children and for hosting We Day, Free the Children’s youth empowerment event.Bob Mahoney
/ The CW

The current Power of Youth issue of Variety magazine contains a full-page testimonial to Canadian actor Cory Monteith, who died July 13 from an overdose of heroin and alcohol at the age of 31.Scott Kirkland
/ Kirkland/PictureGroup

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The Great White North continues to leave a small but indelible footprint on Hollywood’s walk of fame and, in some cases, misfortune.

The current Power of Youth issue of Variety, an entertainment trade magazine founded in 1905, features a number of Canadian names and faces. The expanded issue is dedicated to the impact some of Hollywood’s young people are having on the real world, outside the day-to-day routine of studio filming, photo ops and red-carpet walks.

Among the Canadians to warrant a mention, perhaps no one is more prominent than Nina Dobrev, the Bulgaria-born, Toronto-raised actor who started her career as teenage single mother Mia Jones in Degrassi: The Next Generation and came to fame as Elena Gilbert in the long-running teen drama The Vampire Diaries.

The youth advocacy charity Free the Children placed a full-page ad congratulating Dobrev, 24, for a Power of Youth Award, bestowed in part for her efforts on behalf of Free the Children and for hosting We Day, Free the Children’s youth empowerment event.

In a separate, full-page profile, Dobrev was cited for engaging First World youth to be ambassadors for change on behalf of less fortunate children abroad, in emerging nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Dobrev noted the charity has built more than 600 schools and classrooms in countries around the world, but added, “There’s still so much to do. We’re … so lucky in America and often don’t even realize it.”

Dobrev has been working with the Canadian-based agency since 2007, when she was still in her teens. For her first mission, she helped build a school and install a freshwater drinking well in a village in Kenya, and helped teach in the local school — a trip, she said later, “that forever changed me, affected my life.”

Dobrev found that when she talked to friends about it, it created a domino effect which inspired other people to act.

“I love their whole concept of kids helping kids,” Dobrev told Variety. “The program really encourages young people to travel to different countries and actually physically do something and meet the kids, as opposed to just donating money and hoping it gets to the source. That’s what I found so appealing.”

The same issue also lauds child actors Maisy and Lennon Stella, progeny of the Whitby, Ont. country group The Stellas. Robin, 13, and Stella, nine, play Connie Britton’s children on the Emmy-nominated drama Nashville.

Veteran Vancouver cameraman Rob McLachlan is cited in a two-page ad placed by HBO in recognition of HBO’s 110 Emmy nominations. McLachlan, 56, has been nominated for outstanding cinematography, for Game of Thrones’ season finale, Mhysa. McLachlan’s nomination is one of 17 for Game of Thrones.

Of the full-page ads in the commemorative Power of Youth issue, none is more poignant and sobering perhaps than the simple, stark full-page testimonial to Cory Monteith.

Monteith, who died in Vancouver July 13 of what the coroner’s report described as “a mixed drug toxicity,” is shown in black-and-white, leaning against leather scaffolding, hands in pockets and smiling shyly, with the simple caption, “Cory Monteith … In our hearts forever.”

The testimonial ad was commissioned by the Fox Broadcasting Company, which produces the TV show Glee, in which Monteith came to fame as Finn Hudson, a star high-school athlete with a growing talent for song and dance.

Glee will return Sept. 26, a week later than originally announced, with a long-planned two-part Beatles tribute. Co-creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy has confirmed to E! and The Hollywood Reporter that Glee will pay tribute to Monteith in the season’s third episode, to air Oct. 10.

The show will then take an extended break, “go off the air for a while,” and return at a yet-to-be determined date.

Murphy ruled out recasting Monteith’s role with another actor.

“The right thing to do for the show, at least at this point, is to have that character pass,” Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter. “When we do the tribute episode … we’ll have to do it in a way where the cast members will not have to recreate feelings of grief that they’ve had this week, but do it in an upbeat way.”

Murphy added that fellow Glee cast member Lea Michele, Monteith’s off-screen girlfriend, will weigh heavily in the final decision.

“(She) felt the best thing for the cast and crew was to … get back to work and be together every day and talk about our memories of him,” he said.

Murphy added that grief counsellors will be on set for the first two weeks of filming “because people are really hurting.”

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